Chapter 5 - THE LOCKOUT
At 5:00 AM on Tuesday morning, Wade pulled his white pickup truck into the alley behind Rose & Rye Bakery.
He expected the back door to be unlocked. He expected the kitchen to smell like roasting strawberries, yeast, and butter. He expected to find me weeping over my mixing bowls, ready to negotiate a quiet settlement to avoid a public scandal.
Instead, he found a brand-new, commercial-grade deadbolt on the heavy steel door.
And standing beside the delivery bay was Marcus Vance—Clara’s investigator—along with two uniformed off-duty police officers.
Wade stepped out of his truck, his suit jacket unbuttoned, his face red with sudden anger.
“What the hell is this?” Wade demanded, marching toward the door. “I work here! I’m the operations manager!”
Marcus stepped into his path, holding up a laminated court order.
“Wade Ellis?” Marcus asked calmly. “You’ve been served with an emergency temporary restraining order and a corporate freeze granted by the Charlottesville Circuit Court. You are prohibited from coming within five hundred feet of this property, its employees, or Megan Ellis.”
Wade stared at the paper, his eyes darting frantically across the legalese.
“This is insane!” he shouted, pointing a finger at the door. “This business owes ninety thousand dollars in back taxes! I’m the only one keeping the lights on! Megan doesn’t know how to run the financial side of this place!”
The steel door opened.
I stepped out into the cool morning air, holding a clipboard. Behind me, my head baker, Tomas, and three kitchen staff members watched Wade with cold, silent stares.
“The back taxes have been settled, Wade,” I said, my voice steady and clear. “I wired the ninety-four thousand dollars you stole from Ellis Operational Holdings back into the county escrow account an hour ago.”
Wade went pale. “How... how did you access that account?”
“The court froze it,” I replied. “And since my social security number was used to open it without my consent, the judge granted me sole signature authority to recover the stolen funds.”
Wade took a step toward me, forgetting the officers for a second. “Megan, listen to me! You’re making a massive mistake! That money was meant for our expansion! Sloan Hospitality was going to put us on the national map! We were going to be rich!”
“Sloan Hospitality has terminated all negotiations, Wade,” a voice called out from the alleyway.
Avery stepped out from behind a delivery van, holding a thick legal folder.
Wade’s head snapped toward her, his expression twisting into pure horror. “Avery? What are you doing here?”
“I’m handing over my affidavit to Officer Alvarez,” Avery said, her voice dripping with disdain. “Along with the audio recordings of you promising to transfer Megan’s trademark to my firm.”
Wade looked from Avery to me, then to the two police officers who were slowly stepping toward him. He realized, with sudden, terrifying clarity, that the two women he had tried to play against each other were standing side by side.
“You set me up,” Wade whispered, his face turning grey.
“You set yourself up, Wade,” I said softly. “When you took something that wasn't yours.”
Officer Alvarez stepped forward, pulling her handcuffs from her belt. “Wade Ellis, you are under arrest for corporate bank fraud, grand larceny, and violation of a protective order. Put your hands behind your back.”
As the metal cuffs clicked around his wrists, Wade looked back at me, his eyes pleading, pathetic, and entirely stripped of his old arrogance.
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“Megan... please,” he choked out. “Call my mom. Don’t do this to me.”
I didn't answer. I simply turned around, walked back inside my mother’s bakery, and closed the heavy steel door behind me.
